By Jack Bosworth, Director, FJ Bosworth & Sons. Published 11 May 2021.

I hope everyone is keeping well. It has certainly been good to get some rain here in Essex over the last week or so, which has done the world of good.

For those of you who do not know me or our family farming business, this piece should give you a proper overview, and hopefully make you want to read the next one.

Coming back to the family farm

October 2017 marked the start of what I think of as the job for life. That was when I came home to work full time on the family farm at Spains Hall in Willingale, Essex.

At that point the business was running:

  • A 270-sow farrow-to-finish indoor pig unit, with three full-time stockmen alongside my father.
  • A 260 hectare combinable crop enterprise, with two full-time staff including my father’s cousin, who was a partner in the business.

Labour costs were high across both enterprises, which made it tricky for me to come back and really take ownership of a given area. It has been an incredibly busy time since.

Buying out the partnership

The main reason for my return was that my father’s cousin had given notice of his retirement at the end of March 2018. After a considerable amount of time and money spent on meetings and advisors, we successfully purchased his share of the business.

That deal was the start of big changes. We carried out extensive reviews across every area of the operation, with one clear goal in mind: build a sustainable business plan that lenders would actually want to back.

Doubling the herd, and growing every income stream

To get there we needed to grow turnover across the board. Since 2018 we have:

  • Doubled the sow herd to 540 sows.
  • Set up a B&B arrangement in Norfolk, housing 150 pigs a week from 40 days through to finishing.
  • Brought nearly all arable operations in house, with the exception of mole ploughing.
  • Introduced new income streams, including straw sales, Countryside Stewardship and contracting.

The decision to double the herd was not just about scale for the sake of it. We had five clear targets:

  1. Improve welfare.
  2. Improve the environment we farm in.
  3. Spread labour costs over more animals.
  4. Improve productivity per sow.
  5. Increase slurry volumes for use back on the land.

And, just as importantly, give our staff better working conditions.

Why the breeding herd came first

The original dry sow accommodation and service area was still producing fantastic performance, but it was getting tired. We quickly identified it as a big driver of our labour costs.

So breeding herd accommodation became our first investment. It also made sense to use that blank canvas as the chance to increase numbers, which in turn would lift sales.

In 2018 we put up a new breeding facility built by Quality Equipment Ltd. It includes:

  • 60 additional farrowing places, next door to the existing 60.
  • A purpose-built service house.
  • Gilt housing.
  • An ESF training area.
  • Up to 440 dry sow places, split across two 220-sow houses with dynamic groups sorted by age and size.
  • Electronic Sow Feeding (ESF), heat detection and a marking/separation unit.

The building is fully slatted, apart from solid laying areas inside the dry sow houses.

Feed, energy and slurry

All of our cereals go into the mill and mix systems on both units. Our home unit is powered by a 100 kWh solar system, which means a meaningful share of our feed is milled using electricity we have generated ourselves.

Around 30 per cent of our annual slurry is spread in autumn on stubbles before establishing oilseed rape. The rest goes onto winter wheat in the spring.

Where we go from here

I am genuinely proud of what we have achieved as a team so far. None of it would have happened without the staff, my father, and the family stepping up to make the numbers work.

In future articles I will share more on how the business is developing, how the units are performing, and my honest take on what is happening across the wider pig industry. I hope you will come along for the ride.

About the author

Jack Bosworth is a fourth-generation farmer and Director of FJ Bosworth & Sons, an arable and pig farming business established at Spains Hall, Willingale, Essex in 1934. The farm has been in the Bosworth family since 1919. Jack works alongside his father Stuart Bosworth, who was named Farmers Weekly Pig Farmer of the Year in 2011. The business is Red Tractor assured.

You can follow Jack’s articles and farm updates on fjbosworth.com, or get in touch via the WhatsApp link on the site.

Written by Jack Bosworth

Fourth-generation farmer at Spains Hall, Willingale. Runs the contracting team and writes most of what appears here.